Sunday, 21 September 2008

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Sex and the Style Editor

Alison Tay

Updating! How To Date A Man Or Woman Who Once Seemed Out Of Your League

This week’s 60-Second Self-Help Book

This week's 60-Second Self-Help Book

Updating! How To Date A Man Or Woman Who Once Seemed Out Of Your League by Leil Lowndes

Why Do I Keep Dating Frogs?
You won’t find your Prince till you go cold turkey on frogs. It’s now time to upgrade your self-worth and upgrade your skills to capture a Prince, the partner you used to think was out of your league. You must weave a good psychological web to catch a superior partner. Just like you need a very different trap to catch a butterfly or a bear, you need very different qualities to catch an honorable partner, a beautiful mate, a high class paramour or a creative companion.

How To Find A Drop-Dead Gorgeous Mate
Don’t swoon too soon. Fawning doesn’t work with a gorgeous person. Good-looking people want to feel you appreciate them more for their other qualities than their drop-dead looks.

Here’s a technique naïve souls might find tricky. Here’s how it works: Say to your stunning potential mate: “I was reading a book that was talking about how people wanted to be remembered for posterity.” Then tell your mate what you’re most proud of in your life. You must tell the truth here.

The next step is to ask him, then listen – carefully – and remember all the details. Then weeks later say, “The reason I admire you so much is…” and fill in the quality they’re most proud of. Embellish a little but stick to the central theme.

How To Find A High Class Mate
When trying to impress a classy Royal, garnish your coffee table with NY Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement and Paris Match. Hide your TV, most magazines unless they’re foreign or literary and anything with your name or initials on it.

Play their games. Go for small ball and big boat sports. Judge a class of sport by how much it costs and opt disciplines with the more expensive equipment involved.

Dress dull. 100% cotton is in. 100% wool is in. 100% silk is in. Fur, leather and anything that was once alive is in. In the Old Money crowd, your status is inversely proportional to the polyester thread count in your clothing.

How To Find An Honorable Mate
You lie, you lose. Integrity is the sine qua non of captivating a good person. If you get caught lying once your believability will go out the door, soon followed by your boyfriend.

You mess up? You make it up. Come across as a really good person from the get-go. Schedule a summit conference with yourself. Make a list of where you are strong in the character department and where you fall short and work on the latter.

How To Capture A One-Of-A-Kind Mate
Track them down to their natural habitat. Many flock to art communities, some in the Meat Packing district, in a homemade houseboat or a tiny garret apartment.

Be your most interesting self. Your living space should reflect your uniqueness. Everything in the room should tell a story. Before his first visit to your place, practise lines like “Oh, that’s a little something I picked up in Tibet” or “That? Oh. I picked that up on Prinzapolka beach in Nicaragua.”

The bottom line? Just be curious about life and creative in living it. Do your thing, whatever it is – and do it passionately.